Coming Up for Air
by fhobos
Summary: We'll share it all: the love, the sin, the punishment. Akane Tsunemori / Shinya Kougami one-shot for now.


**Spoiler warnings:** none

**Notes:** I guess I'd place this post the end of Psycho-Pass, in a future in which Kougami continues to work under Tsunemori.

Depending on the reception, I might consider expanding this to a one-shot/drabble series.

**Edited on Mar.22.2013**

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**1**

_we'll share it all: the love, the sin, the punishment_

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Kougami's hiss of pain is a sheet of ice down her back and—

(It takes her by surprise, she hardly hears it, average citizens hardly ever manage to injure him and the businessman brandishing a knife is as average as they come but that's _exactly_ why he was able to. The immediate panic in his eyes show that he knows he shouldn't have thought of it, shouldn't have taken out the knife when the MWPSB approached him outside an abandoned warehouse, shouldn't have jabbed wildly, shouldn't have sliced the man's arm. He was only afraid. He didn't know that fear makes killers out of anyone and his Crime Coefficient shoots up because now he knows and he raises his arm to strike again)

—Akane moves in front of him, swifter than the blur of steel, hands shooting out like a cobra's head, catching the man's wrist; her right hand clenches it and twists it down in an arc, pulling him forward while her left hand smacks his head to a stop. His knife wrist is captured in the fold of her right arm. She clenches it, the knife drops, her hand whaps the back of his neck. He slumps to the floor, a heap of gray suit and cheap cologne and average expectations.

Kougami is clutching his forearm. The gash is surprisingly deep but nothing he hasn't gotten before. He takes his hand away and the palm is red but this isn't what he remarks upon: "The knife could've hit you in the stomach. I don't want to act like Ginoza but that was reckless."

"Maybe I've been with you for too long," Akane jokes. She's busy checking his arm that she doesn't notice the strange look flashing across his face. "Let's call this in and get your arm fixed."

They stand by the car, waiting for the pick-up crew to arrive.

She's tapping on her wrist phone when he says, "Do you think so?"

She looks up from the blue screen. "Think what?"

Kougami looks like he wants to chew his words. He works his jaw, biding his time. "That we've been working together for too long." She stares at him, trying to figure out what he _really _means and he says, "Your Hue," his eyes flicker away briefly before settling back on her.

(She knows he does that when he's reluctant.)

"It might cloud. You should take care."

Akane's eyes glows blue as the wrist phone analyzes her Hue. The blue fades to brown and she extends her arm for him to see: it's clean, as always. Her talent. In another world, it won't count for anything, but here, it seems to mean everything.

He smiles a small smile; then, the relief that chases the clouds from his eyes. He won't request a different Inspector, not today. But some other day, if she fails to snap an assailant's wrist? If she stares over the edge and fails to blink, to step back? His brows are furrowed like it pains him to form a smile. It breaks something in her.

He's turning away and she grabs his hand.

He looks down. Now her palm is sticky red, too.

"Shinya," she says and he pays attention. It's the tone she used when she told Ginoza to _shut the fuck up, thank you, _in the early days, not in those exact words but the same message was packaged in a prettier box; it's the tone she used to calm him down from shooting the Dominator, it's the tone she uses at night, sometimes—

"Shinya," she repeats, quickly now. She feels that she will drown if she doesn't speak. "I made a promise to myself and I intend to keep it." Promises are sacred, selfish hopes that should be kept inside and occasionally cast out, to hook onto something or someone. He knows this, she knows this, and so he doesn't ask her to explain and she won't tell him.

He is unmoving yet his face gives her the impression of a shell closing. Her hand is still clutching his, a heated, feverish touch that melts the blood pasty slick. She has to look up at him and at moments like these it reminds her of the glass wall that rises silent and wraithlike between them. She can only watch him slip away while she shouts. Do her words make a sound if he isn't there to hear them?

Akane's voice rises, barbed and granite-edged. "'_With a boss like you, I might be able to work as a detective, not just a dog.'_ Were you lying to me then? Or are you lying to me now?"

Eyes widen and then Kougami laughs quietly, a short gust of air; when he laughs, it always seems to have been startled out of him.

"Besides," she says, the hardness of her tone falling away like old clay, "There's no one else who's better to be your partner than me."

"I know," Kougami says. He always has, but it's something that's taken longer to say. He leans to one side so his head touches hers, ignoring her half-hearted, "We should act professional, we're still on the job," because she's smiling.

Her voice is the one that whispers to him at night, sometimes, when the fear-sweat clings to his brow and—

(He hates that his loud, ragged breathing wakes her up, drags her from the comfort of sleep to blink in the darkness with him but he can't control it, it's like some dark thing trying to claw its way up his lungs. He tells her to _sleep, I'm fine, _and she says, _was it Sasayama-san? Makishima? Masaoka-san? Shusei-san? _and her hand moves up to his cheek, turns his face towards her so she can see his eyes and he doesn't say, _It was you, it's always you, _he never does. He lowers his head so he can kiss the bend of her shoulder and when his tongue dips into the hollow of her neck and traces her collarbone, and his hands leave lines of fire across her breasts, she places her palm on his chest, eases him back down on the bed and hovers over him, short bangs curtaining around her eyes and he can only think, _copper brown, _as she presses her lips along his jaw and drags her teeth down the pulse that jumps in his neck and his thoughts fizzle out like sparklers at summer festivals when her hips roll into his and she drags a sharp breath out of him, like he's starving for air after remembering what it tastes like.)

—he never says, _it's you, it's always you, _because he thinks she knows the truth without him saying a thing.


End file.
